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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/25923040">need you to be here</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/ThunderstormsandMemories/pseuds/ThunderstormsandMemories'>ThunderstormsandMemories</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Persona 5</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>F/F, Long-Distance Friendship, Mutual Pining, Post-Canon, Pre-Relationship, Trans Female Character, and i will continue to push this agenda, but i simply think the entire royal trio is trans bc i said so, sumi being trans is not super relevant to this fic</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-08-15</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-08-15</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-05 04:02:24</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,307</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/25923040</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/ThunderstormsandMemories/pseuds/ThunderstormsandMemories</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Sumire is lonely at college, Futaba is lonely at home, they voice chat while Futaba plays video games and maybe almost talk about their feelings</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Sakura Futaba/Yoshizawa Sumire | Yoshizawa Kasumi</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>50</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>need you to be here</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>my late contribution to sumitaba week for the prompt "video games" and also based on a prompt Zan gave me a while ago:  '“Don’t be silly. I want to stay up with you.” futaba/sumi with futaba staying up doing some hacker/gamer shit and sumi Insists on staying awake to keep her company'</p><p>spoilers for like. Sumi's whole storyline</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Sumire had expected to be busy, had expected to be constantly tired. She was used to intense practices, and having to do her schoolwork in stolen moments during water breaks or before class, and falling asleep, sore and exhausted, the moment her head touched the pillow. She’d been expecting all of that, even knowing that college would probably be even harder, and she could deal with it. The part she hadn’t been prepared for was the loneliness. Before she’d always had her sister, and then, after those few months which that had been the worst time in her life for so many reasons, she’s always had her friends: Ryuji, the only person who willingly worked out with her on a regular basis and always took her out to lunch after; Akira, who didn’t exercise with her anymore but still was always ready with a cup of coffee and a friendly face when she needed someone to talk to, while Morgana sat on her lap and purred; Ann and Shiho, who dragged her out for shopping trips when she buried herself too deeply in work and practice; Haru, who entrusted her with her rooftop vegetable garden after she graduated; Makoto, who helped her with homework when she’d had to miss school for meets; Goro, who always knew when what she wanted wasn’t advice or a shoulder to cry on, when what she really needed was to vent about everything bothering her even if she normally would’ve considered it too petty or mean to share with anyone; and, of course, Futaba, who she’d been crushing on pretty much ever since they met, who was cute and funny and made her feel simultaneously always off-balance and more relaxed than she did with anyone else.</p><p>Picking a university away from Tokyo had sounded like a good idea at the time, when she’d been looking at their brochures that promised her everything she wanted, and she’d assumed that being able to text her friends would be enough, since that’s mostly what she did already. She hadn’t realized how hard it would be, to be alone in a strange place where nobody knew her. She’d thought it was difficult to always be known as half of a matched set, even with the other half gone, but it was painful in a different way to think that no one here knew that about her. Something so life-shattering, so formative to who she was and how she thought about herself, that shaped the way she moved through the world, something too big for her to possibly explain to anyone who hadn’t lived through it, who hadn’t known her and Kasumi, or at least witnessed her falling apart and putting herself back together, and no one here knew. No one here would ever really know, even if she could force the words out to give anyone the basic summary, to say <em> I lost my sister a few years ago. We were close </em> like that did any justice to what had happened. She spent so long defining herself by trying to be Kasumi’s brother, and then being Kasumi’s sister, and then pretending to be Kasumi, that she still had a hard time believing that anyone could see her as just Sumire. She <em>liked</em> being just Sumire, though, and she still felt a little bit guilty about that too.</p><p>And everyone was busy, too busy for Sumire to feel comfortable taking up their time, until Futaba texted her and asked if she wanted to voice chat while Futaba worked her way through some tough levels in the new game she was playing. <em> just talk abt whatever </em> , she said, <em> ur voice is good for helping me stay focused and stuff, plus I wanna hear how ur life is going I know it’s only been like a month but it feels like so long……… </em></p><p>So here they were. It had been a month since she’d heard Futaba’s voice, but if she closed her eyes and cupped her hands over her earbuds to block out any outside sounds, she could imagine her perfectly, as though she were sitting next to Sumire on her tiny dorm bed that was barely big enough for one person let alone two.</p><p>“So how’s Shujin?”</p><p>“Oh, you know,” Futaba said, and Sumire could hear her frantically typing in the background, “Shujin-y.” There was a pause in the clacking of keys, like she was thinking so hard about what she was going to say that she couldn’t even do anything in her game at the same time, which was impressive considering Sumire had seen her hold conversations while doing incredibly complicated and probably illegal things with computers that Sumire didn’t understand even a little bit. “It’s just kinda weird though, because I thought I was getting so much better with people and school didn’t suck so much anymore because I had everyone there with me, and then I was super worried last year because everyone else left and I thought it was gonna be hard for me again, and of course I missed Akira and Ryuji and everyone but you were still there so it was fine, and then I thought I was gonna still be fine even when you left, because I was making so much progress, you know? Except maybe not as much as I thought because- this year kinda sucks? I had gotten so comfortable being around you that maybe I kinda forgot how hard it is to be around other people or something.” She fell silent, and Sumire heard the tell-tale clicking of her resuming her game. “I dunno, it’s just kinda disappointing, like maybe I wasn’t doing as well as I thought.”</p><p>“I think you’re being too hard on yourself,” said Sumire carefully. She knew all too well what it was like to beat herself up for not coping as well as she thought she should, or for suddenly hurting in a way that she thought she’d moved past. Sometimes people asked her for her name, and she almost responded with Kasumi’s, and sometimes she had trouble thinking about the future, whenever she was expected to plan her course load and her career, because she still couldn’t shake her childhood ideas of her future, where Kasumi would always be with her. “Not being around friends isn’t supposed to be easy. And just getting so comfortable around us was really big for you.” She very carefully didn’t think about how Futaba had made it sound like it was her specifically. Surely she meant in the general sense, just that she was the last of her friends to leave Shujin. Futaba would have felt the absence just as strongly if Akira had been the last one left, or any of their other friends.</p><p>“I guess,” Futaba said.</p><p>“You’ve come really far since I’ve known you,” said Sumire, gaining more momentum and also more confidence as she kept talking, “and it’s been really cool getting to see that. And it’s okay that you miss us and that it’s not easy all the time. I really miss you too.”</p><p>“Oh,” said Futaba.</p><p>“I mean, we all miss each other, right? Friends miss each other, when they’re not around.”</p><p>“Huh,” said Futaba. “You’re right, but also I think I miss you specifically. Like, yeah, I miss everyone in their own way but I really wish you were here. Or maybe I wish I was there, because you deserve to be out in the world doing your thing and not being stuck in high school.”</p><p>“I wish you were here with me, too,” Sumire said, the words slipping out before she could think about them, not realizing how true they were until they’d been said. She missed all of her friends, missed the comfortable familiarity that came with being surrounded by them, their quirks and voices and gestures that she’d come to know so well. She missed them like she missed her own bed at home, familiar and comforting and safe in a way she hadn’t even noticed until she was tossing and turning on this hard new mattress in a strange room whose shadows didn’t feel friendly to her yet, like they had been making the world a softer place and she’d forgotten how harsh it could be. She missed Futaba like a broken bone.</p><p>“We can meet up when you come home for break, right?” She asked it like there was even the slightest chance Sumire would say no. “Or I can come visit you maybe? I don’t know if I’m up to that yet but I kinda wanna try? Just to see if I can and also because I really wanna see you. Unless you don’t want your cool college friends to know you used to hang out with some nerd.”</p><p>“You’re cooler than anyone here,” said Sumire. “I would love for you to visit. Although, it might be kind of tough since I only have one bed and it’s not very comfortable, but we’ll figure something out.”</p><p>“Of course we will! That’s what we do.”</p><p>“Yeah,” Sumire said. “Also, I don’t have many friends here. No one close anyway. The team is pretty cool, but they’re all so intimidating, and I don’t think they like me very much.”</p><p>“Then they’re idiots,” said Futaba confidently, the same matter-of-fact way she would announce that she’d beat a particularly hard level or hacked into some top secret government database again. “And- ugh, shut the fuck up!”</p><p>“Oh… sorry.” Sumire felt a jolt of panic, wondering what she’d said that had been so wrong, even though she hadn’t actually been talking, before realizing that Futaba was probably talking to her game.</p><p>“No, not you, please never shut up,” Futaba said, and heat rose in Sumire’s cheeks. She was grateful, now, that this wasn’t a video chat. She wanted to see Futaba’s face but absolutely did not want her to see how furiously she was blushing. “This asshole won’t stop his fucking villain monologue like, c’mon, dude, we’re only a few hours in, you cannot possibly be important enough to the plot to justify having to hear your stupid voice saying dumb shit about like, being sad because no one likes you because you’re mean to them.”</p><p>“Wow,” Sumire said, “sounds like a real jerk.”</p><p>“You have no idea,” Futaba said, and then launched into an explanation about the complicated geopolitics of her video game world, punctuated by increasingly creative swearing that would’ve had Morgana trying to stuff his paw in her mouth as she worked her way through the boss fight. She had just started on a tangent about the character she was going to try to date, and how cool and badass she was, especially that time she punched the guy Futaba hated in the face, when she interrupted herself with a yawn so big that her headphones fell off with a concerning clatter. “I’m fine,” Futaba said. “Minor hardware malfunction.”</p><p>“Maybe you should go to sleep soon?” said Sumire. “You can finish this level tomorrow.” <em> You can talk to me more, tomorrow, if you want to </em>, she didn’t say.</p><p>“Nooo,” said Futaba, and Sumire pictured her sliding down in her chair, like she always did whenever Morgana tried to tell her to go to bed or eat a meal that wasn’t chips. “I can’t sleep until I get through this boss fight, please, Goro is already two quests ahead of me and if he beats this game first he’ll be super insufferable about it.”</p><p>“That’s because he has a real adult job that he can take days off from in order to play video games all day,” said Sumire, “and you have to go to school in the morning.”</p><p>“Ughhhh,” said Futaba. “Don’t remind me. What if instead I just became a full-time gamer? Or, or, or what if I could go to school but like, only for video games?”</p><p>“You can do that in college,” said Sumire, “but you have to get through high school first so you’re at a high enough level, and to do that you have to go to sleep.” Futaba laughed, the soft way she always did when Sumire tried to use video game terminology in conversations, not like she was making fun of her but like it was a joke they were both in on.</p><p>“Nah,” Futaba said. “You can though, I don’t wanna keep you up too late, I know you have lots of shit to do tomorrow too. Oh no, I’ve already kept you up way past your bedtime, didn’t I? Gah, I’m so sorry, you have better things to do than listen to me ramble.”</p><p>“Don’t be silly,” Sumire said, wishing she could reach out through her computer screen and take Futaba’s hand, “I want to stay up with you.” Well. Maybe not take her hand, since she probably needed both considering she usually played games on hard mode, but maybe put a hand on her shoulder or something. Some point of physical contact between them, something solid and comforting that could say everything she couldn’t with her voice.</p><p>“Oh no you don’t,” said Futaba. “You need your rest! You’re a jock, you gotta be awake to do sports things!”</p><p>“I guess,” Sumire said, rubbing her eyes. She didn’t feel particularly tired, not anymore, even though she’d almost fallen asleep in class that afternoon. But talking to Futaba had woken her up as much as Akira’s strongest coffee did, and set her heart racing the same way “I like talking to you though. And I’m going to be tired tomorrow anyway, so I might as well be tired because I was doing something that makes me happy.”</p><p>“We can talk tomorrow? Or some other time, IDK, you might be busy tomorrow-”</p><p>“Tomorrow sounds amazing,” said Sumire, smiling so widely her cheeks hurt. “I’m looking forward to it.”</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>title from Ease My Mind by Hayley Kiyoko, shout out to my roommate for telling me to stop looking at emo sad songs for titles because this is supposed to be a nice soft fic</p><p>after this Sumi immediately texts Goro to be like "futaba said all this cute stuff to me and wants to visit me and sleep in my bed but she probably doesn't like me like that what do I do" and he's like "are you fucking kidding me" because Futaba is texting Akira at the same time like "oh no I'm in love with sumi what do I do" and Akira texts Goro to be like "we weren't this oblivious were we"</p><p>come say hi on <a href="https://twitter.com/selkie_au_lover">twitter</a>!</p></blockquote></div></div>
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